1. Color Symbolism

2. Welcome back! Find a partner near you (without moving) for warm-up discussion. You’ll also need a piece of paper / fresh notebook
Discuss: What’s your favorite color?
Why?
Discuss: What are different shades of that color?
What do you associate with them? Try to apply meaning to them.

3. Universal Symbolism
Come up with at least 5 symbols that are universally recognized by everyone.

4. Universal Color Symbolism
White
White: : “Your name is entirely white, is it not?”
Innocence, purity, goodness
Black: “You know, in all your black hearts, that this is fraud!”
Darkness, evil, fear
Red: Of Mice and Men “the girl in the red dress”
Warning, sensuality, aggressiveness
Green: “Nature’s first green is gold, / the hardest hue to hold”
Fresh start, renewal, nature-related
Purple/Gold: Proverbs 31:22 of a virtuous woman: “she makes a tapestry for herself; her clothing is fine linen and purple.”
Royalty or upper class/wealth/highly valuable/worthy

5. Gatsby Pre-Reading
How a book starts helps us orient in the world that the book is creating
Epigraph: a piece of literature that is included before another piece of literature

6. Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”
--Thomas Parke D’Invilliers
1. What goes the hat being “gold” probably indicate?
2. What might “bounce high” mean?
3. Consider what we know of F Scott Fitzgerald and the basic premise of Gatsby. How does this epigraph prepare us for beginning Gatsby?

7. First sentences
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had.’”
What are different privileges people have in the world today?
How might these privileges have been different in the 1920s?
What effect might this piece of advice have on a narrator? On the audience’s trust of the narrator?